Where did you grow up?

[ksanders]

Mu cousin was HOT!

Wifey B: Not quite the same as Arkansas kissin' cousins but a Ray Stevens song I like:

Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red
My father fell in love with her and soon they too were wed

This made my dad my son-in-law and really changed my life
For now my daughter was my mother, 'cause she was my father's wife
And to complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad
For if he were my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grownup daughter, who was of course my step-mother

Father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue
Because although she is my wife, she's my grandmother too

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
'Cause now I have become the strangest 'case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa

I'm my own grandpa, I'm my own grandpa
It sounds funny, I know but it really is so
I'm my own grandpa

 

[LarryM]

Mu cousin was HOT!

My cousin Marsha was hot too, we got caught, but that's a whole other story . . . .

Now, back to the original question "Where did you grow up?"

I was born in San Francisco, and grew up sailing on the bay, first boat was an Opti pram, then a Fin, a 505 and a Knarr. Our family boat was a 45' steel Alden sloop, later a Bertram 38 Convertible.

In the Navy, I was lucky enough to crew on a Luders 44 Yawl. Afterwards, married a French girl, moved to La Rochelle, France for a decade and sailed our Fisher 37 mostly on the Bay of Biscay, but once all the way to Cowes and Southampton.

Back to the States, settled in Texas and seriously raced IOR and MHS sailboats until I ran out of wives, friends and finally, money.

Got sick, got well, and made the move to power boats, older Bertram 31, older Donzi 22 and now a very older Fales/Willard 30. It's complicated.

I now calmly ply the brown waters of Galveston Bay and points South, but I want to go faster . . . . . . I like faster better

 

[N4712]

Well so far it's been about two miles from the beach, around little boats and more recently bigger ones.

 

[boatpoker]

I left home 2 weeks after I graduated HS.
Prior to that, my growing years can be segmented into 8-5-5.

Age 0 to 8 I lived in a coastal, railroad logging camp that grew rapidly during and right after the war. I have chronicled that life in several other threads here and it was probably one of the most in-depth learning periods. I saw more about life, death and human behavior in those first 8 years than at any other time.

The deserted "Jap Town" with all the personal possessions left by the interned Japanese sawmill workers, was one of our playgrounds.

The morning routine of hand feeding uneaten pancakes to bears out back of the cookhouse; cutting a flat car loose to watch it sail right off the end of the tracks into the bay; the scrambling of people and boats in the middle of the night to evacuate Harbledown, an island camp cleaned to the dirt by a forest fire.

Through it all, the water was as much a part of us as the air and huckleberries. So, so many laughs...so many tragedies.

---------------

8 to 13 were the pure fun, innocent years on the settled homestead in Powell River. Like Ted, water, bush, rafts, beachcombing, a 22 and a row boat created another world away from camp. Oddly, as many times as I fell in the drink in camp, I never learned to swim. That came in about the first week of beach life at Myrtle Point.

I had two best friends; Dixie, the fattest black Lab ever created, a better swimmer and diver than any of us and Frank, my step grandfather who was born in Minnesota on the Oregon Trail westward from New Brunswick. Frank left school in grade 3 but was the most learned man I have ever known. He lived by the sea, worked it but never learned to swim either. Taught me all the good things about life that a 10 year old doesn't grasp until decades later, if ever.

---------------

From the innocent years of 8 to 13 came the morphing of tadpole to toad; 13 to 18.

For as long as I can remember, beach fires were a nightly ritual. Hot dogs burned hard and covered in ash, corn cobs and clams boiled in sea water. Beach fire blankets, where so many secrets were left when the fires flickered out...city girls visited for weeks in summer...at 14, well, you've all been there, right? Man, I hope you have...Hooo aaah!!!

All sea life was so plentiful, mom would not only tell us to go get a fish for dinner, but what kind and how big.

Though I had been on many old boats around camp, this was the first period of family boats. A variety that culminated with me "building" a kit boat as my grade 11 project. I was the only kid whose project was not at school. Shop teacher would visit every week or two for a look see and a few beers with the old man.

At 18, life vomited on my boots...

Hawg, you have a way with words and sound like you have a fascinating story. Write a book and I'll be your first customer.

 

[Art]

I grew up an Army Brat, all over the world...a new post every 2-3 years. People tell me how hard it must have been to grow up that way...No, it wasn't. I was 10 years old before I met kids my same age who'd lived in the same house since they were born ...and I was flabbergasted...and I felt sorry for them 'cuz they'd never been anywhere. I'd already spent a year in Korea--would have been longer but all dependents were evacuated as the Korean Conflict erupted--and was headed for Austria for 3 years as soon as school was out for the year...and half a dozen states by the time I graduated from high school.

My dad grew up in West Palm Beach FL and never lost his love of boats, which he passed on to me. Bought my own first boat when I was about 30...the rest is history....

Peggie - You are history in the making! No one else in pleasure boat world has your panache for making "heads"... turn correctly!

Your daddy did good!!

 

[Art]

My cousin Marsha was hot too, we got caught, but that's a whole other story . . . .

Now, back to the original question "Where did you grow up?"

I was born in San Francisco, and grew up sailing on the bay, first boat was an Opti pram, then a Fin, a 505 and a Knarr. Our family boat was a 45' steel Alden sloop, later a Bertram 38 Convertible.

In the Navy, I was lucky enough to crew on a Luders 44 Yawl. Afterwards, married a French girl, moved to La Rochelle, France for a decade and sailed our Fisher 37 mostly on the Bay of Biscay, but once all the way to Cowes and Southampton.

Back to the States, settled in Texas and seriously raced IOR and MHS sailboats until I ran out of wives, friends and finally, money.

Got sick, got well, and made the move to power boats, older Bertram 31, older Donzi 22 and now a very older Fales/Willard 30. It's complicated.

I now calmly ply the brown waters of Galveston Bay and points South, but I want to go faster . . . . . . I like faster better

You've had fun! Haven't many of us!!?? And, still having fun today!!

So... if you want to go faster... get a Tollycraft. Prices are right. Boats are built like a BSH - i.e. they last and are easily maintained. Tollycraft Boating Club Forum can answer nearly any question you have. As well, there is a Tollycraft parts site run by the lead Tollycraft purchasing agent (Gordon) for couple decades during Tolly's manufacturing heyday!

Tolly Classified - Authorized Tollycraft Parts

 

[HeadMistress]

Your daddy did good!!

I think so too. He was an engineer (career officer in the Corps of Engineers in the days when the Corps was actually building things instead of just enforcing ridiculous regulations) and I was his only child. So I was the one who held the flashlight and handed him tools. I inherited a good bit of mechanical ability from him and he also taught me to apply logic and plain ol' common sense to problem solving. And our peripatetic life made it almost essential for me to become self-reliant....maybe too much so.

He's also the reason I relocated to Arkansas after 26 years in Atlanta. He and my mother had settled here when he retired from the Army...He'd been assigned here as the deputy district engineer and they liked it. My husband had died (cancer) and so had my mother (Alzheimers)...I'd sold my company and was looking to scale down from much more house and property tax than I needed when it occurred to me that it would be in both our best interests if I were closer to him than 500 miles. He'd been here 40 years and I knew that not even dynamite would get him to move. So in 2001 I bought a house 4 miles from his. He was 86 at the time...I figured I'd prob'ly be here 2-3 years. But it turns out that I'm descended from a remarkably long lived gene pool. Dad passed away in 2010 at age 95! By then I was pushing 70 and I'd been here so long, it just didn't seem worth the effort to move again. I still miss the old goat...we'd become great friends--better than we could ever have become long distance and we had good times together!

So yep...my daddy did indeed do GOOD!

 

[Art]

I think so too. He was an engineer (career officer in the Corps of Engineers in the days when the Corps was actually building things instead of just enforcing ridiculous regulations) and I was his only child. So I was the one who held the flashlight and handed him tools. I inherited a good bit of mechanical ability from him and he also taught me to apply logic and plain ol' common sense to problem solving. And our peripatetic life made it almost essential for me to become self-reliant....maybe too much so.

He's also the reason I relocated to Arkansas after 26 years in Atlanta. He and my mother had settled here when he retired from the Army...He'd been assigned here as the deputy district engineer and they liked it. My husband had died (cancer) and so had my mother (Alzheimers)...I'd sold my company and was looking to scale down from much more house and property tax than I needed when it occurred to me that it would be in both our best interests if I were closer to him than 500 miles. He'd been here 40 years and I knew that not even dynamite would get him to move. So in 2001 I bought a house 4 miles from his. He was 86 at the time...I figured I'd prob'ly be here 2-3 years. But it turns out that I'm descended from a remarkably long lived gene pool. Dad passed away in 2010 at age 95! By then I was pushing 70 and I'd been here so long, it just didn't seem worth the effort to move again. I still miss the old goat...we'd become great friends--better than we could ever have become long distance and we had good times together!

So yep...my daddy did indeed do GOOD!

Cool life story! Congrats!! Keep on a liven!!!

 

[Hawgwash]

Hawg, you have a way with words and sound like you have a fascinating story.

Thanks poker.

Truth is, we all have stories.
That's why they invented cockpits for boats, right?

I have to give credit to some ancient pictures for the memory jogs and a brother, 6 years older, who fills in many of the blanks. He's a guy that can't remember where he left his teeth last night but can describe in finite detail the first Pussy Willow of 1946.

Looking back on the time spent in camp, what stands out; not long after we could walk and scrub our own keels, we were turned out and never told we could not go anywhere.

The older kids looked out for the young ones; that's just the way it was. The one time I recall one of us cashing in his chips in a creek, the camp wailed for an hour and got back at it.

Those below school age either hung at school, side kicked one of the camp crew, rode the trains or just explored and got into no good. The no good was part of the growth. Even though dispatch radios were painted fire bucket red, picket fences felled like Douglas Firs and fingers taken off with axes, there were never consequences. Just laughter.

The attached picture is our gang from the one room school. Grades 1 to 7; kids from two camps. Looks like a couple were too big for grade 7, and they were. Some were legitimately still in grade 6 or 7. After seventh grade some returned to aid the teacher while others shipped out to boarding school or...went to work.

 

[MurrayM]

There's a hemlock just out of Kitimat with a classic School Marm top...thought you might get a chuckle out of that...

 

[Hawgwash]

There's a hemlock just out of Kitimat with a classic School Marm top...thought you might get a chuckle out of that...

How many hit Google for that one?
Now we'll send them back for a Pecker Pole.

 

[Old deckhand]

Perhaps they should also look up dog-hair stand.

 

[FLSunfish]

Wifey B, I am one of the few who didn't grow up around boats. but now couldn't imagine any other way of life. We actually live on our Sea Ray and have a 25ft fishing boat docked next to us.
From 0-12, my family lived along a creek in Eastern Washington. Too small for boats, but I learned to fish before I started school.
Then we moved to West Central Pennsylvania - still land locked, but continued to fish the creeks . . . boatless.
Finally in my 40s I met the man who became my husband, and he had a boat and liked to fish. A few years later we sold his small 14ft bass boat and moved to the Florida Panhandle. We lived in town, bought a 17 and a half ft boat, and quickly learned that it was a bit small for the Gulf on all but the calmest days. It was also a pain to trailer the boat to the ramp, fish all day, and then have to trailer the boat back home, unload, take out the batteries to recharge (trolling motor you know), and flush the engine. So - sold that boat and bought a 25 ft Chris Craft cuddly cabin that was bottom painted and could be docked.
That really set the rest of the story in motion for us. Having the boat at the dock with batteries charged ready to go opened a whole nother world for us! We could keep our gear on the boat so all we had to bring over was gas for the boat, bait for the fish, food and drink for us, and we were on our way. About four years ago we traded the Chris Craft in for the bigger Sea Ray Sedan bridge that has a nice galley, head, and a great sleeping area in the v-berth. We've been living on the Sea Ray now going on two years with the Robalo 2440 walk around docked next to us. We're now on the Gulf ICW, and if you've boated past the Alabama Pass at Orange Beach heading towards Pensacola Pass, you've gone past our boats by the Theo Barr bridge. It's such a great way of life that when we dream about what we would do if we would win the lottery, it's all about buying the bigger, better, newer boat - to live on.

 

[BruceK]

florida with 4 years in Australia.

We miss you.

 

[sbu22]

Ozark mountains in southeast Missouri where the rocks pack a lunch. Drafted into the USN (yeah, you read that right -drafted) in 1965. First boating was a 25' 12 or 14 man launch that we rowed forever in boot camp. Boat handling they called it.

Kevin - I'll see your "Next of Kin" and raise you "Winter's Bone" - Dent County, MO

 

[AKDoug]

South central Alaska, for all of my life. Started by floating on a door in a gravel pit at 4, moving on to inner tubes floating in the creek and finally a canoe (a $40 kit in Boy's Life magazine). After the Navy a 13' river kayak, then a 16' flat bottomed aluminum river boat, moving up to the 24' Bayliner.

Now the Willard, probably my last boat as it's probably the most boat I can afford to own and operate on my income. I like to go fast too, but I will take filling the fuel tank every 200-300 hours (150 gallon tank) over 120 gallons for every 4 day trip.

No plans to ever leave Alaska, but I would like to make a trip or two down the coast back to the Inside Passage and a trip to Mexico for a winter is my dream

 

[ksanders]

Ozark mountains in southeast Missouri where the rocks pack a lunch. Drafted into the USN (yeah, you read that right -drafted) in 1965. First boating was a 25' 12 or 14 man launch that we rowed forever in boot camp. Boat handling they called it.

Kevin - I'll see your "Next of Kin" and raise you "Winter's Bone" - Dent County, MO

Reynolds county.

Are you related to any of the Sanders, or Phelps?

We're probably cousins.

 

[sbu22]

Hah! Not that I know of. Almost next door. Beautiful country, but. man ....... I left and never looked back.

 

[Art]

Hah! Not that I know of. Almost next door. Beautiful country, but. man ....... I left and never looked back.

No wonder... Panache was chosen. Congrats!

 

[DNT99611]

Sort of like AKDOUG. Kenai Alaska since age seven. My dads best friend helped me catch my first fish, Rainbow in Beaver Creek, and then let me go with him commercial fishing. The only time I whined was when he said it was time for me to go home. Got in my blood and I have had boats ever since. Some commercial and some not but all fun.

 

[Donsan]

Cocoa/Rockledge FL. My family had three boats as we were growing up. The first was a 14' sailboat which I was too young to remember much about it. The second was a Regal Line Lancer built in St. Cloud, FL with a 35hp Johnson which was later upgraded to a 50hp Johnson. Did a web search and found someone selling old vintage advertisement photos of an 18' version on eBay. IIRC, ours was 16' with a shorter cockpit. We would cruise on the St. Johns River, Indian River and Banana River locally but we also trailered it all over FL. Mom and dad would sleep on the boat and we would sleep in Army surplus jungle hammocks. Back in that day, the St. Johns used to be navigable south of Sanford down to Melbourne. The last boat was a 25' Owens which was mainly for ocean fishing. Dad kept the boat down at Port Salerno when it was a small fishing town and most of what is now Port St. Lucie didn't exist.

Big changes in FL over the years.

 

[Moby Nick]

So many seem to have spent their childhood right near big water. I grew up near the Touhy Ave beach in Chicago until grade-4, then South Bend, IN. My first boat was a 7' plywood dinghy with her bottom missing that a friend and I found ion the Touhy Beach at age 5. We nailed slats across her open bottom and towed her around the neighborhood on top of a wagon. At Age 10 in South Bend my dad and I installed a new bottom with a daggerboard well and built a sail rig. Mom made a sail on her Singer sewing machine. We'd haul the dinghy to Lake Maxinkukee and sail across from a fishing boat launch to the public beach in Culver.

My first "real" boat was Snipe #7910 my best friend sailed on Diamond Lake, MI at age 16. We towed it with his Jeepster. He used to say that lots of kids in High School owned cars, but we were the only two with a boat. Took my first wife sailing in that Snipe in our college years.

I'm still "boat crazy" at age 76

 

[Hawgwash]

7' plywood dinghy with her bottom missing...nailed slats across her open bottom and towed her around the neighborhood on top of a wagon...dad and I installed a new bottom...Mom made a sail on her Singer sewing machine...I'm still "boat crazy" at age 76

Right on Moby Nick!

I'm pretty biased but, after our generation and the next, there is no other growing up like ours, with the Tom Sawyer learning like we did.

 

[BandB]

Wifey B: Well, I missed out my first 21 years of life, but sure making up for it now.

 

[Retriever]

In the middle of Lake Washington, on Mercer Island. Neither parent was particularly into boats, but we had boats around. Long before I could drive a car, I had a 10' Zodiac with 5hp outboard down on the lake. I took that thing all over...Coulon Park for milkshakes and lunch, the Arboretum by UW to jump off the old bridge, even the locks, just because I could.

In middle school we bought a cabin in the San Juans. We had a 20' Whaler I'd use in the summer...the 35-40 knot cruise speed made it easy to visit anywhere in the San Juans in a day, but the logs sure came out of nowhere!

 

[Hawgwash]

I took that thing all over... just because I could.

That...says it all.

 

[Heron]

My first "real" boat was Snipe #7910 my best friend sailed on Diamond Lake, MI at age 16. We towed it with his Jeepster. He used to say that lots of kids in High School owned cars, but we were the only two with a boat. Took my first wife sailing in that Snipe in our college years.

I'm still "boat crazy" at age 76

My first was a Snipe too! Remember distinctly the day my Dad towed it home....I was 3 (67 now). I restored it when I was 12 and Sailed that til my late teens when we traded for a Cal 20...

 

[WD40]

I grew up in Edmonds, WA with most of our summers spent on Lake Goodwin, and my wife is from Everett, WA.
Always been close to the Sound or on a lake which makes the boating blood run thick through my veins.

Now that we've been in Helena, MT for 17 years (Swearing we'd never move back to Western Washington) we're now looking to find a place in Skagit or Whatcom County so we can be at a more reasonable distance from Otter.

 

[pearlwindham]

B
I was brought up in the same area as you. I graduated from South Garland in 79. I'm just 35 miles from there now in Terrell Texas. My wife's family had a lake house on Cedar Creek for 20 years learned to ski, fish, pleasure boating etc. there, we were high school sweethearts. Later my own boats would haunt all the local fresh waters. My Grandfather was a big time fisherman and his hand me downs were usually what I ended up buying, price was always right ya know? I have been studying for a few years now. The big water boats. never learned to sail and when semi retiring it seemed I was going backwards to learn lots of things that took so much effort especially solo. My wife loves the beaches however doesn't care for the deep dark big.... really big... water. She's allowing me to run off to the west coast and chase my dreams. she'll be staying at the Lone Star her baby's are here. You asked my gender in another thread. Male......Pearl is my middle name and was some joke between my father and uncle, they're ident twins. I'm sorry to say you are still vastly outnumbered. I hate the Texas summers and the older I get the less I want to try and tolerate another, however there is nothing better than a Texas fall. Football, Deer hunting, and my horse riding slash camping adventures up in the Arkansas Mountains, we have a cabin there. Would be considered hills in the PNW. So I'm going to spend that half here and the other half on my new boat. That's the plan anyway.

 

[THD]

Pearl-sounds like a plan!

BTW-I like your name. My grandfather, born and raised around Port Natchez, TX was named "Pearlie". He always thought it came from his family roots along the Pearl River in Miss/LA in the mid-1800's.